Yoostar: Karaoke for Movies
Pretty much everyone wants to be in the movies. Even if you don’t want the downsides that come with celebrity, there’s no denying that it would be fun to be the main actor or actress, uttering famous lines on the silver screen. Sure, you probably can’t act- but not being able to play guitar or drums hasn’t stopped us from loving Rock Band or Guitar Hero. And having a singing voice that is more infernal than heavenly hasn’t proved an obstacle to karaoke and KTV sessions.
Yoostar takes a simple idea and makes it work at home- put yourself in the movies, like those insert-yourself-into-famous-pictures booths at some tourist attractions but with famous scenes. There are a couple of problems that prevent it from being particularly fun, and thus unlikely to be successful, but we can still respect a company and product that has a reach that exceeds the grasp. In this case, the tech demo feeling of the green screen and stitching software isn’t compelling enough to impress most folks, and the gimmick runs thin pretty quickly. The analogy with karaoke breaks down a bit after you play with the Yoostar for a while- who wants to see their karaoke recorded and watch it later?
That’s basically the premise here- replace the actor playing a scene with yourself. You put up the 6×6 foot green screen, connect the camera to your computer, and the video camera (a 2 megapixel webcam basically, with a nice stand) films you after you’ve selected a movie, scene, and role. Sounds good- but there are several catches. The first, and most prominent, is the limited selection of scenes. Included in the box are only 14 scenes, and though they are decent, they aren’t really enough. Others are available for download, and they hope to have a library of 200+ clips up, but you will have to pay for each one you want (and vary in price at $1-$4 each). Next restriction- you can only use their software to save the videos; no Youtube uploading or DVD burning, though you can share on Facebook and Myspace. The video quality is OK- scenes without much movement work better than those with more motion, and due to the Chromakey technology you cannot wear green or use green props. We were impressed by some results though, and they have a nice gallery of examples. Audio is quite a bit worse though, with a mediocre microphone and audio that left a lot to be desired. Yoostar can only work with PCs right now, sorry Mac and Linux users. And how many people want to use their PC instead of their TV? You don’t play Rock Band or sing karaoke tethered to your computer.
All in all, it’s definitely a mixed package. We love movies here, and did enjoy some of the films that we got to play around with- The Godfather, Field of Dreams, Rocky, Animal House. Others that you can download include Blade Runner and Casablanca. The build quality of the equipment wasn’t that great though- our tripods were shaky. And since actors actually have to give their permission along with studios, clips from Terminator didn’t include Arnold. We like the concept, but it definitely won’t be replacing karaoke or Rock Band anytime soon, and it feels more gimmicky than natural- we doubt that we’ll see any great performances on Yoostar first. At $170, the price is pretty fair though, and we look forward to seeing future versions. Movie-oke holds some promise, once the kinks get worked out.
